by R. E. Butler
“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry for everything that you suffered.”
Her eyes locked on his. He saw the slight flex of her hand as she gripped Sterling’s even tighter. “I don’t know what I would do if my mother were alive now. I don’t know what I would feel like if she were still alive and had left me to rot. I think…I think I like it better knowing that she’s been dead. Does that make me a bad person?”
Crux growled. “No way. The only person who’s guilty of behaving reprehensibly in this situation is your mother. You didn’t do anything wrong, and you’re allowed to feel whatever you feel. We’ll never judge you.”
“I spent a long time thinking that I brought it on myself. That I wasn’t a good enough daughter. But I really think that she just hated me. Hated me because I was born and she was saddled with responsibility when all her friends were busy partying. I just don’t know why she wouldn’t let me leave. I don’t know why she had to sell me.” Lowering her head to her arm, she started to cry again, but never lost the grip on Sterling’s hand.
They sat with her until she was done crying, and then they tried to fix her something for dinner, but she wasn’t hungry and excused herself to bed.
When her bedroom door shut, they went to the kitchen to talk. Sterling said, “If her mother wasn’t dead I’d kill her myself. What kind of mother would sell her daughter to become a mate to someone she didn’t even know?”
Orion leaned back in the kitchen chair and scrubbed his hand over his face. “I’ve heard some pretty shitty things before, but nothing like this. She was with that asshole wolf for six years. She seems fragile in some ways, but she was clearly strong enough to have survived abuse for so long.”
They talked about the coming week, deciding to alternate their gym shifts so that someone was always home with Sydney. Sterling went downstairs to work out and Crux went into the office to check his email while Orion called Dante and spoke to him about their work plan.
“You’re welcome to bring her along to the gym whenever she has her identification, if you think she’d like to come work with you. It sounds like she would probably enjoy getting out of the house and into the real world.”
“Thanks, Dante.”
“If you need anything at all, just let us know. Alyssa’s looking forward to meeting her. Maybe you can bring her to Sunday dinner?”
Orion agreed to speak to her about it and ended the call.
The next morning after breakfast, they took her out to a nearby mall and let her pick out clothes and shoes that fit her better than the things that Crux had gathered for her. Other than sharing that she hadn’t been clothes shopping since before she was taken, she didn’t speak much except to remind them that she didn’t have any money.
Crux gestured towards a changing room at the back of the women’s department. “We didn’t ask for you to pay for anything. We promised to take care of you, and that means making sure you have clothes that fit, food to eat, and a roof over your head.”
She didn’t answer him, just stared at him curiously and then entered the dressing room. It had taken two hours to get her clothes, undergarments, and shoes, but as far as Orion was concerned, it was time well spent. Although they still didn’t know the specifics of her years of captivity, he knew that showing her that they genuinely wanted her to be happy was the start of building trust between them. They had less than seven weeks before she would be heading to Alaska to live with her cousin. It seemed like a long time on one hand, but on the other hand, he knew that giving her time to heal and find peace meant that the time might become unbelievably short.
As he watched her in the cosmetics store choosing makeup and bathroom products, delicately sniffing shampoos that Crux opened for her, he hoped that seven weeks was more than enough time for her to realize that they were her mates and choose to stay with them. He wasn’t sure what would happen to them if she left.
* * * * *
By Friday, Sydney didn’t need Sterling’s presence to stop having nightmares. He was glad she was sleeping soundly. Even though he had liked being there for her, he hadn’t liked that she was still so tortured by her past. A past which was still mostly a mystery to them. After a mere week, she looked like a completely different person. Her dark blonde hair had lightened with the time she spent outside, her fair skin tanning slightly to give her a healthy glow. And she was starting to fill out little by little, thanks to all the food they heaped on her plates at mealtimes.
It had just been the two of them for dinner Thursday night, and Sterling had tossed steaks and tinfoil packets of seasoned veggies onto the grill. He didn’t know much about cooking, but he could out-grill anyone.
“Take more, Little One,” he urged, holding the platter of grilled steaks towards her.
“I already have one,” she laughed, but he could see that she was hungry enough to eat two.
He pushed another one onto her plate. “Now you have two.”
Orion and Crux were at the gym. All week long, they’d taken turns, two of them going to work and one staying home with her. Sterling preferred to stay home. He trusted his brothers to keep her safe and happy, but he preferred to do it himself.
“What about your brothers?”
“They can fend for themselves.”
“You keep stuffing me full every meal and I won’t be so little anymore,” she chided, her smile revealing a small dimple in one cheek.
“You’ll always be my Little One.” He spoke the words without thinking, and she froze, fork halfway to her mouth, brows drawn.
“Until I leave for Jan’s.”
He’d already said too much. His brothers would be pissed at him for what they would view as him pushing her.
He couldn’t take the words back, and he didn’t want to. He’d spoken more to Sydney in the last week than he had to his brothers in the last two months. He cleared his throat and looked down at his plate. Cutting through the thick, rare steak, he shrugged his shoulders, trying to sound unaffected. “Here or in Alaska, you’ll always be ‘Little One’ to me.”
The conversation played over in his mind as he stared at the high ceiling of the den. It was painted dark gray, the same color as the walls and the plush carpeting, so that it looked more like a den and less like a basement. He didn’t mind sleeping in the den, but the last four nights he’d spent sitting up against the door frame while Sydney fell back asleep had been a little bit of heaven for him. The only better thing would have been if she’d allowed him to hold her while she slept. That would have been touching nirvana for him. He’d lain awake for several hours now, part of him hoping that she’d need him, and part of him knowing what a selfish dick that made him. Finally, he rolled over and closed his eyes, waiting for sleep to come.
By the time he showered and dressed in the morning, it was nearly ten, and he could tell by the scent of dishwasher soap that he’d missed breakfast. It wasn’t that he was hungry, but he enjoyed eating meals with Sydney. The reminder on Thursday that she was planning to leave with Jan in six weeks, just after the October full moon, had set his beast on edge. Which probably accounted for his worthless night’s sleep.
Orion was leaning against the counter eating a bowl of cereal and reading something on his phone. Next to him sat a priority envelope from a shipping company. It was addressed to Dante.
He pointed to the envelope and said, “What’s that?”
“Syd’s new identification.”
“She see it already?”
Nodding, Orion dropped the spoon into the now-empty bowl and straightened. He opened the envelope and dumped out the contents: an ID card, a birth certificate, and a social security card. Sterling picked up the ID card. It had the picture of Sydney that Orion had taken with his cell on Sunday after she spoke to Jan. The name on the card was Brittany L. Thompson.
He tapped the card against his thumb absently. “She doesn’t strike me as a Brittany.”
Orion nodded. “She doesn’t think so either. She was really upset when she saw th
at they had changed her first name. She said that when the relo group had contacted her that they said they would only change her last name, which is her mother’s maiden name. The wolf who mated with her never married her legally.” Orion sighed. “Apparently she was named after a friend of her mother’s who had been very kind to Syd when she was a kid, who died when she was ten, and she doesn’t want to change that part of herself.”
Sterling’s pulse picked up. “She okay?”
“I don’t know. She was pretty shaken. She went for a walk.”
“By herself?”
“Yeah.”
He wanted to storm out into the woods and find her, but if she wanted to be alone then he doubted that she would appreciate the gesture. Instead, he grabbed his keys from the bowl on the counter and headed towards the front door.
“Where you going?” Orion called.
“To fix this,” he answered, closing the door behind him.
Two hours later, he sat at a back booth in a tiny dive bar on the outskirts of Newport, Kentucky, a half-empty bottle of beer in front of him. He glanced up when someone slid into the empty side of the booth.
“Good to see you, Garrett,” Sterling said, reaching his hand across the worn tabletop to shake his hand.
“You haven’t called me in a long time, kid.” Garrett leaned back and motioned to the bartender. This dive was Garrett’s stomping ground.
“I haven’t needed a favor like this before, and I knew you were the only guy that could do it.” It wasn’t a lie, either. Garrett was one of those guys that could get anything done, legal or illegal. Garrett was Sterling’s father Harley’s friend, back from the days before his dad had gotten tamed by their mother. It had only taken two minutes of explanation to his dad before he gave him Garrett’s number.
“Well, as a favor to your dad I’m not going to charge you my rush processing fee. The birth certificate, state ID, and social security card will pass muster for the DMV so she can get her license. I used your address, as you requested, and the last name you picked.”
A plain brown envelope slid across the table and Sterling shook hands with Garrett again, slipping him a folded stack of bills rubber-banded together. Sterling slid out of the booth. “Can’t stay and chat?”
“I need to get back. But thanks for everything.”
“My pleasure. And tell your dad that we’re even for the Carney’s Point trip, okay?”
Sterling asked, “Do I even want to know?”
Garrett took a drink of the beer that a waitress set down in front of him. “No, kid, you do not.”
Chuckling, Sterling walked out of the bar, got into his truck, and headed home. When he walked in the front door, he caught Sydney’s naturally sweet scent and followed it to the family room, where she sat watching TV with Orion and Crux. She smiled at him, but it wasn’t a real smile. Not like she’d given him before.
Sitting on the coffee table, he handed her the envelope.
“What’s this?” she asked, sitting up straight.
“Open it, Little One,” he urged.
She opened the metal fastener that held the envelope closed and pulled out the documents. Her eyes widened as she scanned the three items. “Oh! Are these real? I can keep my name?”
“If it’s important to you, then it’s important to us,” he said.
She let Crux and Orion see the items, and then to Sterling’s surprise she launched herself into his arms. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she kissed his cheek, burying her face in his neck for a long moment. “Thank you, Sterling. Thank you so much.”
“I’m glad you’re happy.”
She leaned back slightly. “I know it’s silly, but I already felt like I lost everything that made me the person that I used to be. I know I can’t ever be that girl again, but I didn’t want to lose her completely.”
“Not silly,” Sterling said, feeling a knot form in his throat the size of a fist. The sheer joy on her face was enough to bring him to his knees, if he wasn’t already sitting down.
Orion asked, “Garrett?”
Sterling nodded. Sydney smiled at him — a real smile this time — and sat back down on the couch, taking the ID and looking at it. “Where did you get the last name from?” She asked.
The name that he had chosen was Karlin. “It means strength. I thought it was fitting.”
She brushed a stray tear from her cheek and laughed lightly, looking at the documents. “Sydney Karlin. I like it.”
He was really, really glad.
Later, when Sydney had gone to bed and he and his brothers were in the kitchen raiding the fridge, Orion said, “I’m surprised you didn’t give her our last name.”
Sterling swallowed a bite of turkey sandwich and said, “I almost did. But then I didn’t know how to explain at work why she had our last name.”
“Good point,” Orion nodded.
Crux said, “When she takes our last name, I want it to be because she loves us.”
Orion chuckled. “You sound awfully sure that we can convince her to stay with us.”
Sterling said, “We’ve got six weeks left. If we can’t make her believe she’s our woman in seven weeks than we don’t deserve her.”
They both nodded. Sterling knew that they still had a ways to go. Her affection earlier had caught him by surprise. She was still very closed-off around them, and they weren’t trying to rush her into baring her soul or doing anything physical with them. His beast was content to just be around her, because even it could understand that she was fragile and needed time to heal the wounds in her heart and soul. They had time. Not a lot of time, but enough, he thought, to slowly break down her walls and show her that she can trust us to never hurt her or abandon her.
* * * * *
Sunday evening, they walked to the home that Dante shared with his mate and brothers. Sydney was excited to meet the other members of the baro. Alyssa and her mates were standing in the kitchen when the group walked in through the sliding back door. They paused and Orion introduced Sydney. Crux saw that her hand was trembling when she shook Dante’s hand, then Cairo’s and Mason’s. Alyssa said, “I’m going to give you a hug, Sydney, okay?”
Sydney nodded and Alyssa closed the distance between them, hugged her, and then laughed. “It’s nice to be around another wolf! I’m so glad to meet you finally. Would you like to help me and Mase finish up in the kitchen? Dinner’s almost ready.”
Sydney agreed and, with a glance over her shoulder at them, followed Alyssa to the refrigerator while Crux and his brothers followed Dante and Cairo into the dining room.
Nyte, Azrael, and Fade were sitting on one side of the long table, talking quietly. They all greeted each other. “Where’s Sydney?” Fade asked, hooking one arm over the back of the chair.
“Helping with dinner,” Orion said.
At first, Crux had wanted to just pull Sydney into the dining room with them, keep her safe and right within arms’ length. But it was actually a good thing for her to interact with others. She’d spent six years trapped with a man she didn’t love. They didn’t want her to feel trapped with them.
Dante sat down at the head of the table and Cairo left the chair on his left empty and sat in the next one. Orion sat down opposite from Nyte and his brothers and Sterling and Crux left a seat between them for Sydney. Within a few minutes, Mason, Alyssa, and Sydney came into the dining room, each holding a platter or bowl. Crux stood to pull the chair out for Sydney and she sat, after being introduced to Nyte and his brothers.
The platters and bowls were passed around and silence settled over the table while everyone started to eat. After a few minutes, Dante asked about a phone call that Nyte had received earlier.
Nyte rubbed at his shoulder with one hand as if he were working out a knot of tension. “There’s a gathering in October and our parents are strongly urging us to go.”
Alyssa looked up from her plate. “What’s a gathering?”
Cairo said, “It’s a hyena thing. Once every
few years, some baros will get together and organize a meet-and-greet of all the unmated hyenas. They’ll come from all over and spend a week in some secluded area, hoping to hook up and find their shared mate.”
Alyssa looked at Dante. “I thought you guys told me that you hadn’t ever met any female hyenas in your age group?”
Mason shook his head. “We haven’t, love, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not around. There are baros all over the U.S. and Canada, some that are a hundred members or more. So although fewer females are born than males, there are females out there and there must be enough that are of mating age for a gathering to be scheduled. Where is it?”
Azrael took a drink of his beer and said, “Somewhere in the mountains in Pennsylvania.”
“You’re going, right?” Orion asked.
“Yeah, but only under protest. We went to one right after Fade turned eighteen and it was a complete bust. No females whatsoever. It was a total sausage-fest,” Nyte answered with a scowl.
Sydney chuckled, trying to hide it behind a cough. Nyte looked at her for a long moment and Crux was about to tell him to back off when Nyte started to laugh and the others all joined in. Sydney glanced at Crux with a small smile and he tweaked her chin.
Long after the meal was over, they were still sitting at the dining room table, talking and laughing about their childhoods. Crux and his brothers had grown up in the same baro with Dante and Nyte’s clans. They were all cousins. Their grandparents had nine children, who formed three clans and found mates. Sitting next to Sydney while she talked to his extended family was one of the best things that had happened in a long time.
Walking home in the dark, Crux was surprised when she reached for his hand and held it. Orion, on her other side, asked, “Did you have fun, sweetheart?”
Crux could hear the smile in her voice. “I really did. It was so nice to be around people and just relax and talk. It was all so normal, but it still felt foreign to me.”
“Foreign how?” Orion asked.
She didn’t say anything for a few moments, as if she were debating what to share. Crux was about to tell her that she could tell them anything, but she spoke before he had the chance.